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Brennan: Tiger Woods shows he's way off course at PGA

You could find Tiger Woods in the trees Thursday morning at the PGA Championship. You could find him in the creek. He couldn't hit fairways. He couldn't hit greens. He left putts short. He wasn't a happy man.

LOUISVILLE — You could find Tiger Woods in the trees Thursday morning at the PGA Championship. You could find him in the creek. He couldn't hit fairways. He couldn't hit greens. He left putts short. He wasn't a happy man.

His much-discussed back, it turned out, didn't fall apart on him. But his golf game did.

Woods finished the first round at three-over-par 74, mired in 109th place, nine strokes from the lead and three shots from the likely cut line. He lost to playing partner Phil Mickelson by five shots. U.S. Ryder Cup captain Tom Watson, who is 64, beat him by two.

Considering all the pomp and silliness surrounding his infamous back spasms and his mysterious, last-minute arrival at Valhalla Golf Club Wednesday afternoon, if Friday's round is as bad as Thursday's, we should all scream in unison: What in the world was the point of all this?

In June, Tiger returned three weeks earlier than planned from back surgery, and rushed headlong into a missed cut, a 69th place finish and a withdrawal due to what he described as back spasms. He has consistently said that he needs to get some rounds under his belt, even though all he has to show for that strategy so far is extremely poor play and a back that still can't be counted on.

If Woods ends up talking about a bad back at next year's Masters, we'll all be wondering why he didn't just shut it down and take the rest of 2014 off to nurse his back into shape after March 31 surgery and slowly work on his golf game.

But that's not how Tiger does things. He seems to think a major championship victory is just around the corner, no matter how voluminous the evidence is to the contrary. He appears to be living in some sort of dream world in which his majestic year of 2000 is one round away, so close he can almost touch it, if only he can get more "reps."

It is this mindset that allows Tiger to say things like this after a round like Thursday's:

"If I get under par for two rounds, that will be right in the ball game."

It's hard to know what ball game he's talking about, but it certainly doesn't appear to be the one being played at Valhalla. The PGA Championship leaderboard is filled to the brim with proven winners and major champions, many of them younger than Tiger and completely unafraid of him.

Even though golf bills itself as a sport built on a foundation of honesty, there seems to be precious little of it surrounding the once-great Tiger. Golf announcers, for instance, consistently and laughably predict under-par rounds for him week in and week out, sounding deathly afraid to speak the truth about the sport's meal ticket.

Refreshingly, however, there is Padraig Harrington, who was the third member of the Woods-Mickelson group, finishing one better than Tiger at 2-over-par.

"The man looks like he needs to play some golf," Harrington said. "He looked kind of raw."

Whether Tiger needs to play more or play less, where he is right now is not a good place. Instead of going to the driving range to hit balls after his round, Tiger said he was heading for treatment on his back. This is progress?

Should Tiger surprise himself and not win this week's tournament, his winless streak in majors he entered will reach 20. Tiger Woods: 0-for-20 since winning the 2008 U.S. Open. Whoever would have imagined that?

People flock to him still, but the roars are muted because there's so little to cheer for. There's a fading movie star quality to Tiger now. Someday he might return to some semblance of his former self, but for now, you're almost waiting for some kid to yell the obvious:

The emperor doesn't have much of a golf game.

PHOTO GALLERY: Thursday at the PGA Championship

Padraig Harrington blasts out of a bunker during the first round of the 2014 PGA Championship golf tournament at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville. Thomas J. Russo USA TODAY Sports